The CRU graph. Note that it is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees -- thus showing ZERO warming

Monday, May 19, 2014

David Suzuki is a confused man

He says skeptics are playing the man and not the ball and then does exactly that himself! He says that skeptics attack Warmists on the basis of personalities rather than attending to the facts -- but he then attacks skeptics on the basis of personalities rather than the facts! He is a rather stark case of pychological projection, I think

In the second part of his conversation with Bill Moyers, Dr. David Suzuki says climate deniers are engaging in a good ol’ game of “kill the messenger.”

“This is a very effective thing that we know has been done by the tobacco industry [and] it’s being done by the fossil fuel industry… You attack a person on the basis of their trustworthiness, their ulterior motives, anything to get away from dealing with the issues,” the scientist, author and philanthropist said.

He said it’s not unlike the attacks he has experienced from Canada’s prime minister, corporations and others over the years for speaking his mind about the government and the fossil fuel industry.

“The fossil fuel industry knows that fossil fuel use is at the heart of climate change,” Suzuki said. “But the problem is their job as CEOs and executives is to make money for their shareholders, and they’ll do it.”

The answer to one of the enduring puzzles of global warming — the apparently sluggish response of the Antarctic continent to rising greenhouse gas levels — may have been settled by Australian scientists. And, in the course of doing so, they may also have solved another problem: the parching of Australia itself.

Nerilie Abram, of the Australian National University’s Research School of Earth Sciences, and colleagues outline their findings in Nature Climate Change. They report that they looked at the pattern of climate in the southern hemisphere and have concluded that the Southern Ocean winds that normally deliver rain to South Australia are being pushed further south towards Antarctica.

Their research was focused on a meteorological phenomenon known — although probably only to climate scientists — as the Southern Annular Mode, which marks the pattern of climate variability south of the equator. For the last 25 years of climate observation, it has been obvious that changes in the northern hemisphere have not been matched by changes in the south.

There are geophysical reasons for some of the difference. For example, most of the inhabited landmass of the planet is in the northern hemisphere; the North Pole is covered by an ocean, while the South Pole is in the center of an enormous continental landmass piled high with ice and snow; and the seasons and wind patterns of the two hemispheres run counter to each other. The two hemispheres are very different.

Weather Observations

In addition, weather observations in the northern hemisphere are much more detailed and have been conducted over a much longer period than in the southern hemisphere.

Conspicuously, the Arctic has been the fastest warming region of the planet, and for more than a decade there was argument about whether the Antarctic was warming at all.

Lead researcher Dr. Abram and her fellow scientists took the measure of the Southern Annular Mode by looking at annual seasonal data since AD 1000 — recorded in Antarctic ice cores and South American tree rings. They then used the information to build up a picture of the past and the changing present.

“With greenhouse warming, Antarctica is actually stealing more of Australia’s rainfall,” she reported. “It’s not good news. As greenhouse gases continue to rise, we’ll get fewer storms chased up into Australia. As the westerly winds are getting tighter, they’re actually trapping more of the cold air over Antarctica. This is why the Antarctic has bucked the trend. Every other continent is warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of anywhere on Earth.”

And conservative gun owners might one day use their guns to wipe out all Leftists. Lots of things MIGHT happen. The article below is just a bit of speculation. There are many turtle clades from previous geological eras but we still have turtles

Out of her shell: Rising temperatures mean more female turtles.
Sea turtles are likely to be beneficiaries of a warming climate as hotter incubation conditions trigger a rising share of female hatchlings that could lift natural rates of population growth, new research to be published in Nature Climate Change on Monday shows.

But gains will be temporary if temperatures keep rising and nudge populations towards becoming all female, or exceed levels at which developing embryos die, the study found.

It will be end of story without human intervention.

"There'll be a bit of a breathing space … but down the track it'll be serious," said Graeme Hays from Deakin University, one of the report's authors.

It has been known for decades that reptile reproduction is highly sensitive to temperature, with the ratio of male to female offspring varying. For species of sea-turtles, the pivotal temperature is an oddly uniform 29 degrees for incubation, beyond which more females emerge from the eggs.

At about 30.5 degrees, populations become fully female. As remaining males die off, "it will be end of story without human intervention", Professor Hays said. At higher than 33 degrees, embryos do not survive.

The study focused on a globally important loggerhead turtle rookery on the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic but its results also apply to species elsewhere, including the Pacific. It found light-coloured sandy beaches already produce 70.1 per cent females, while beaches with darker sands are at 93.5 per cent.

The findings should help steer conservation efforts to make a priority of protecting lighter-coloured sandy beaches or planting more vegetation near dark ones to ameliorate the warming, Professor Hays said. "If you have to build a hotel, build it behind the dark-coloured beach," he said.

Since breeding populations are likely to swell in coming decades, sea turtle adult populations are "unlikely to be dire in the next 150 years", the paper said.

Professor Hays said any near-term increase in turtles would be modest compared with past populations. Green turtles in the Caribbean, for instance, are "a fraction of 1 per cent" of their original numbers.

Other changes linked to global warming, including effects on food sources, will also likely offset some of the benefits of having more breeding females, he said.

"Rising sea levels resulting in the loss of nesting beaches [through erosion] could push local turtle populations over the brink unless new suitable nesting beaches are found," the paper said.

It remains to be seen whether sea turtles, which have survived hundreds of millions of years, can adjust quickly enough to a changing climate, Professor Hays said.

Possible adjustments could include females laying their eggs at milder times of the year or shifting to cooler regions.

With global temperature data now available for the first three months of 2014, an interesting trend has clearly emerged: global cooling. No longer is it just a hypothesis. For the first quarter of each calendar year since 2002, it is effectively a fact at reasonably strong statistical significance. Here is the data:

Temp Anomalies

That downward trend since 2002 has a p-value of 0.097 (r=-0.48), which is below the p=0.10 (90%) threshold used in many climate science studies for statistical significance, and very close to the standard p=0.05 (95%) threshold generally employed across the physical and biological sciences. The same level of statistical significance is obtained regardless of whether parametric or non-parametric trend analysis methods are employed.

Some readers may be looking at this plot and thinking that the global climate data since 1880 looks a lot like a cycle, with a stable period (of neither warming nor cooling) of, say, 140 years in length between the approximately 70-year long alternating cool and warm periods. It certainly has that appearance. If such is the case, we would expect a return to "normal" January-March global temperatures by 2050, give or take a decade or two.

In the United States, the January-March 2014 temperature was well below the 20th-century average. There has been no statistically significant trend in January-March temperatures in the contiguous USA since 1980. None, for 35 years and counting. The same lack of trend applies for the December-February temperatures. Depending on how you define winter, either – or both – of these timeframes is considered the wintertime period.

So there has been absolutely no change in wintertime temperatures in the United States since before Reagan was president, and yet the The Guardian is reporting that the latest National Climate Assessment finds climate change to be a "clear and present danger" and that "Americans are noticing changes all around them ... Winters are generally shorter and warmer."

There is no trend – I repeat: no trend – in wintertime temperatures in the United States since 1980.

On an annual basis ending in March, there has been no change in the contiguous U.S. temperature since 1986 (actually, probably since 1985, but we'll give the alarmists the benefit on this). You get the same result on a calendar-year basis. That's right: there has been no change in annual temperatures for the United States since Bon Jovi had a number-one hit with "You Give Love a Bad Name," the Bangles were telling us to "Walk Like an Egyptian," Madonna was asking her papa not to preach, and Robert Palmer was "Addicted to Love."

According to Virginia Burkett, the chief scientist for global change at the U.S. Geological Survey, "all areas are getting hotter." All of them? So bold, yet so inaccurate. The entire Ohio Valley climate division has not seen any significant warming on an annual basis since 1896. The entire U.S. South climate division hasn't warmed since 1907. Neither has the entire Southeast climate division since 1896.

The National Climate Assessment claims that "summers are longer and hotter." Hotter summers? There is no trend in the average June-August temperature (aka summer) in the USA since 1930. Same lack of trend for July and August average temperatures.

On an annual basis ending in March (allowing us to use the most complete dataset possible), global warming stopped cold in statistical terms during 1997. And since 2002, the correlation coefficient has – in fact – turned slightly negative. Very weak evidence for global cooling, but on the balance of probabilities, since 2002, there is more statistical evidence for global cooling than there is for global warming. Scientists such as Don Easterbrook, a professor emeritus of geology at Western Washington University, have been making similar predictions for global temperatures.

In the Southern Hemisphere, where climate scientists are now apparently warning that the "Antarctic Ice Shelf [is] on [the] brink of unstoppable melt that could raise sea levels for 10,000 years," the annual cooling trend since 2003 is even more probable (r=-0.22, p-value as low as 0.34 using non-parametric approaches).

The poor-quality science reporting on climate change is ubiquitous. Over at the Daily Kos, we find a plot of "Global Temperature (meteorological stations)." Given that oceans cover 71 percent of the planet's surface, what possible meaning could a "global temperature" derived only from "meteorological stations" have? The answer is none. Any talk of a global temperature must include both land and sea data, and be properly weighted according to station type and location. And this assumes that the data itself is correct. Various climate skeptic websites have repeatedly shown that we need to doubt the data itself, not just the analyses.

As the countdown to the proposed climate agreement in 2015 ticks along, expect more of this hysterical nonsense not founded in the underlying data, as well as more concerted and emphatic denials of the global cooling phase we may be entering. One can only hope that the moderately conservative leaders in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom will not fall prey to the hysteria, but instead take a principled scientific stand in 2015 and lead the charge to reject any international climate agreements.

Unfortunately, many crony capitalists – including a number in the fossil fuels industry itself – are starting to see greater financial benefits for themselves by going along with the hysteria, rather than fighting for reality.

Perilous times indeed. The next couple years may not only see the end of America's economic domination on the world stage, passing the torch instead to communist China, but also witness the final death throes of rigorous, objective science in the public interest.

EPA’s new MATS rule is not based on scientific evidence of benefit from the reduction of mercury emissions; it is nothing but a ruse. The U.S. Government’s “war on coal” claims to be a “war on mercury.”

While the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed “Mercury and Air Toxics Standards” (MATS) rule is supposed to reduce exposure to “mercury” emissions, this is just a pretext; the real intent is to control “carbon” emissions, or carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, to be more precise.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury, signed by nearly 100 nations a few months ago, aims to reduce emissions of mercury and mercury compounds, (i.e. “total mercury”) to the atmosphere. The Convention derives its name from the town of Minamata Japan, where the “Minamata disease,” a form of neurological poisoning was observed in Japan in the 1950’s and later on also in other locations in Japan.

The Minamata disease was determined to result from “methyl-mercury,” a derivative of the element mercury. Methyl-mercury, in contrast to elemental mercury is a also a common product of microbial action upon other dissolved mercury compounds, especially in ocean and lake sediments of low oxygen content; more on that further down.

With EPA’s use of “mercury” as a way to regulate the coal-using industry it behooves us to look at the whole mercury situation in more detail. What could be the problem with EPA’s attempt to reduce “mercury”?

Mercury or CO2?

EPA uses “mercury emissions” as a convenient mechanism to regulate and discourage the use of coal for electricity generation and heating. However, EPA’s real intent is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that President Obama frequently terms “carbon pollution.”

The mercury rule is nothing but a red herring to control fossil fuel-derived energy production which is claimed to contribute to “climate change.”

To use a crass analogy, it is akin to doing away with all civilian airplanes just because on 9/11 airplanes were used as weapons. Several trade unions recently called the proposed MATS rule “nothing less than industrial sabotage by regulatory means.”

While mercury (in whichever form) is only a minor by-product of burning coal, it is claimed to be the intended target of the proposed MATS rule. Therefore, it ought to be reasonable to look at the various forms and uses of the mercury, their chemistry, effects and quantities. Let’s begin with the element itself.

Use of Mercury

Elemental mercury is known to most people in the form of a silver-like shiny liquid. Elemental mercury is best known from such devices as thermometers like the kind used by your mom to measure your body temperature when you were a child and had a fever, or in motion-activated light switches under the hood of your old Chevy, or even some other electrical switches commonly found in households. For many decades, such uses were common throughout the western world. In fact, the humidity control device in my house contains a small glass vial with liquid mercury inside. It changes position with the humidity in the air to allow either a connection or break of the electrical circuit between the poles.

Because of its high density of 13.5 (relative to that of water, i.e. 1.0), liquid mercury can support all kinds of things close to its surface. There are practical uses for that property as in light houses. Widely used in former times and still found in some locations, their structures supporting the Fresnel lenses are floating on a bath of liquid mercury. The reason is twofold: there is hardly any friction to slowly turning the lens system for creating blinking lights and, more importantly the lens system is always perfectly parallel to the earth’s surface. The latter is critical to the distance from which the light can be seen to guide ships through treacherous waters.

In chemical laboratories around the world, elemental mercury is quite common. There are various applications of its unusual physical properties; from one-way valves to vacuum pumps. As a chemistry student, I worked with such things for years. With proper handling none of us experienced any problem using mercury.

Apart from applications that make use of elemental mercury’s physical properties like its high density and electrical conductivity, there are other common uses of mercury of which you may not be aware. Amalgam is one of those and more likely than not you have some of that in your mouth.

Amalgam

Indeed, you may have a significant amount of mercury in your body. I am not talking trace amounts here, but real quantities, say a volume like that of your mom’s sewing thimble filled with the element. Most of that mercury is found in your teeth, put there (after some drilling) by your friendly dentist. Of course, he or she didn’t put liquid mercury into your extended cavities but a mixture of mercury and another element such as silver powder. When well mixed, the liquid elemental mercury and the silver powder rapidly combine to a rock hard solid, generally known as an amalgam.

Silver-mercury amalgam is most suitable for filling dental cavities as it can be formed to any shape but will harden within a few minutes. It is also extremely durable, resisting any dissolution by saliva and can last for a lifetime. However, I do not dispute that some other amalgams, for example those made with lesser metals such as zinc, are less stable and should not have been used for dentistry.

Silver amalgam is still widely used by dentists around the world when it comes to filling cavities in teeth with a material that is easily applied, hardens rapidly, is strong and lasts a life time. Though quite obvious from its silver-like appearance, its properties for dental fillings are unsurpassed.

The ease with which mercury forms an amalgam with gold is also widely exploited by small claim gold miners around the world. Small claim panning for gold is a major use of mercury. In order to extract and consolidate the gold flakes and nuggets, miners in Brazil and elsewhere use elemental mercury to capture the gold flakes in water running over liquid mercury beds. The gold binds with the mercury and the solid gold-amalgam can be sieved off. The mercury is then easily recycled by heating the amalgam in an iron pot with the resulting mercury vapour forced through a water bath where it liquefies again. The gold remains as a solid lump in the crucible.

Mercury compounds are also common preservatives in various medicinal products such as vaccine solutions that require stability and shelf life before application.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) Rule

In order to understand how the new MATS rule stacks up against reality, some simple calculations are useful. The most basic ones would give estimates of mercury emissions from the “villain du jeur” (coal) and other sources. Let’s do some math:

Mercury from Coal

The U.S. consumes close to 1,000 million tonnes of coal a year, or 10^12 kg. That coal contains close to 0.1 ppm (parts per million) of mercury. Hence, on combustion, of all that coal and without any cleansing of the flue gases, a total of 100 tonnes or 100,000 kg mercury would be coming out of all chimneys in one year. As the density of mercury is quite high (approximately 13 times that of water), roughly, that amount of mercury would fit into a volume occupied by a table that comfortably seats eight persons..

Mercury from Teeth

As mentioned, for the last one hundred years or so, silver amalgam has been the material of choice to fill dental cavities. I recently visited my favourite dentist and asked him about the amount of amalgam in my mouth. He assured me that it was quite comparable to his other patients of equal age. When I asked about the combined volume of all of such fillings, he guessed about one milli-liter or the volume of half a sewing thimble. That would represent about 10 grams, or 0.01 kg of mercury as amalgam.

Now, let’s multiply that by the population in North America, say 400 million, and you arrive at an amount of 4,000,000 kg of mercury in the entire population’s teeth. As you can see, that number is approximately 40 times that of the annual release of mercury from the burning of coal, 100,000 kg/per year. Wikipedia states the total amount of anthropogenic (manmade) emissions of “mercury” in the U.S as 144,000 kg/year.

At a death rate of approximately 8% of the population and with an estimated one third of the population being cremated, the amount of mercury so released then also comes to 0.1 million kg (elemental) mercury; the same quantity as calculated for the mercury from coal. Indeed, EPA concluded that only one half of the mercury emissions comes from coal.

Mercury from other Sources

Most difficult to estimate is the amount of mercury released from sources other than the two mentioned above. While the element (in any form) is relatively rare with its abundance in the earth’s crust estimated at 0.067 ppm, slightly higher than that of gold, it also is found in any rock and soil in nature; mercury compounds are ubiquitous in nature. Therefore, methyl-mercury and other mercury compounds are also found in aquatic organisms around the world including those far from any human settlement.

In nature, mercury is almost never found as the free element but only in compounds with other elements. Of these, cinnabar, mercury sulfide is by far the most common one. Its bright red color made it a favored cosmetic for millennia.

Toxicity of Mercury

This brief discourse on mercury would be incomplete without a quick review of mercury’s (in any form) toxicity. However, that is also a major bone of contention.

Elemental mercury, i.e. its vapor is a known neurotoxin. Many of the early investigators of mercury’s effect suffered from its neurological toxic effects before they were recognized. However, it would be wrong to call mercury a villain on that basis only.

Chronic exposure to elemental mercury vapor causes neurotoxic effects like the “mad hatters” disease. However, as with all things toxic, the dose or concentration over time of exposure is most critical. While long-time exposure to elemental mercury vapors causes severe effects, no such effect has been proven to arise from the extremely low levels of mercury and its compounds in the atmosphere that result from the burning of coal. Therefore, the limitations on coal-fired power plants based on their mercury emissions are not scientifically defensible.

Pollution by soluble mercury compounds in lakes, rivers or ocean embayments like at Minamata can lead to increased methyl-mercury levels in local fish above the natural background concentration of approximately 1 ppm. However, the amount of mercury contributed to the atmosphere from burning coal is miniscule relative to its natural background levels in most environs. Even without the use of any coal whatsoever, the concentrations of mercury and its compounds in the environment would not change materially.

Therefore, EPA’s MATS rule is not based on scientific evidence of benefit from the reduction of mercury emissions; it is nothing but a ruse, solely invented to couch the “war on coal” as a “war on mercury.”

It’s a pipeline, for crying out loud. The United States already has 185,000 miles of liquid petroleum pipelines, 320,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines, and more than 2,000,000 miles of gas distribution pipelines. Using the latest steel, valves and other technologies to build another 1,179 miles of pipe – to move 830,000 barrels of oil per day safely from Alberta, Canada oil sands country and North Dakota’s Bakken shale territory to Texas refineries – should not be an earth-shattering matter.

KXL would create jobs – in an economy that grew at a pathetic Depression-era clip of 0.1% during the first quarter, and where the true jobless rate (unemployed, underemployed and those no longer looking) is almost 13 percent, and much worse for minorities.

In fact, Keystone would create some 20,000 construction jobs; another 10,000 in factories that make the steel, pipelines, valves, cement and heavy equipment needed to build the pipeline; thousands more in hotel, restaurant and other support industries; and still more jobs in the oil fields whose output would be transported to refineries and petrochemical plants where still more workers would be employed.

States along the pipeline route would receive $5 billion in new property tax revenues, and still more in workers’ income tax payments. Depleted federal coffers would also realize hefty gains.

The pipeline would ease railroad congestion all over the central USA. The pipeline’s absence is forcing oil producers to move crude by railroad tanker car. That certainly improves the bottom line for RR companies and folks like Warren Buffet who have big-time investments in tankers.

But it causes train logjams and delays that are creating backlogs in getting fertilizer and other supplies to farmers, who have already been hard-hit by a long winter and now may not be able to plant on schedule. Come fall, their efforts to ship corn, wheat and other crops to market will also be stymied.

By reducing the need for RR tankers, KXL would also reduce oil spills and improve safety. A 2013 derailment in Quebec killed 47 people; 2014 rail accidents in Colorado and Virginia resulted in significant oil spills but fortunately no deaths. The Bakken Field’s light crude contains more dissolved gases and thus is more flammable than heavier crudes (like Canadian oil sands output), but both tanker cars and the Keystone pipeline would carry a variety of crude products.

Improved track maintenance, train scheduling and other safety practices would reduce rail accidents and spills. However, as US State Department studies point out, the Keystone pipeline is inherently safer than RR alternatives – and would likely result in fewer than 520 barrels of crude being spilled annually, compared to 32,000 barrels in the three rail spills just noted.

KXL will augment America’s national security, make North America more energy independent, further improve US balance of trade, reduce global supply and demand imbalances, and aid our European allies in their quest to counter Vladimir Putin’s energy blackmail.

The hydrocarbon wealth the pipeline would transport will help ensure improved human health, welfare, living standards and other many other benefits, in a more stable world that has more sources of jobs, wealth and income equality. Approval would improve relations with our ally and trading partner Canada. Not tapping and safely transporting all these oil, natural gas and propane resources makes no sense.

But despite all these solid reasons for building the pipeline President Obama refuses to approve it, even to protect vulnerable Democrat politicians, for fear of offending ultra Keystone hater Tom Steyer or losing his hardcore eco-base. Senator Harry Reid can hardly bring himself to allow even votes on nonbinding resolutions in support of KXL. And rabid environmentalists say they’re prepared to go to jail over it.

What in blazes is going on here?

Keystone is symbolic! In fact, it has become the symbol of Big Green environmentalism’s immutable opposition to … and hatred of … anything hydrocarbon. KXL is fracking, oil sands, onshore and offshore drilling and, above all, “catastrophic manmade climate disruption” (the latest nom de guerre, since the global warming and climate change monikers and models have abjectly failed to reflect climate reality).

KXL represents their determination to de-develop the United States, reduce our energy use and living standards, redistribute wealth – and permit Third World development only in accordance with their supposed “sustainable development” and “renewable” energy “principles.”

The Keystone XL pipeline issue is as phony as a $3 bill. Blocking its construction will have about as much effect on Earth’s climate as a hand grenade would in stopping a hurricane, even if carbon dioxide does influence weather and climate change far more than thousands of scientists say it does.

(More than 1,000 climate scientists, 31,000 American scientists and 48% of US meteorologists say there is no evidence that humans are causing dangerous warming or climate change. And it is increasingly obvious that much of the remaining “consensus” is obtained by harassing, intimidating and browbeating any scientists who might be tempted to stray from the alarmist party line.)

China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and dozens of other countries are burning coal, driving cars, modernizing their hydrocarbon-based economies and emitting CO2 at a fevered pace. Further delaying or ultimately blocking Keystone will have no effect, especially if the oil simply goes to Asia, instead of the USA.

However, Big Green has staked its power and reputation on Keystone – and it will not back down.

This $13.4-billion-per-year US eco industry is determined to block the Keystone pipeline. As Washington Examiner columnist Ron Arnold revealed, the $789-million Rockefeller Brothers Fund launched its “tar sands” and pipeline campaigns in 2008. It funded a dozen attack groups, told them what the Fund wanted done, and presented the strategy and tactics for mobilizing the troops, inventing and spotlighting the pipeline’s alleged dangers, recruiting always-helpful media allies, and slowing and stopping KXL.

The campaigns are backed up by other fat-cat liberal foundations that collectively have more than $100 billion in assets! As Arnold pointed out, they gave more than $80 billion to some 16,000 American environmental activist groups between 2000 and 2012 – and those groups were also supported by over $100 million in grants from US government agencies!

Hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer has promised to give $100 million to anti-Keystone Democrats. Law firms are making serious money filing lawsuits against KXL. And of course Hollywood elites can always be counted on to lend their support and innate grasp of energy and economic issues to pipeline opponents.

This is a force to be reckoned with, a force that is largely responsible for inflicting nearly $1.9 trillion in regulatory compliance costs on United States businesses and families. That’s one-eighth of the entire US economy. It’s no wonder job, economic and investment growth rates are so miserably low.

President Obama and other Democrats, environmentalists and liberals love to expound on how compassionate and socially responsible they are. How devoted to justice, workers, middle class families, jobs, and human health, safety and welfare. How honest, transparent, respectful of others’ opinions and needs, and accountable for their mistakes and failures.

Am I the only one who sees pitifully little evidence for any of these self-proclaimed saintly attributes?

Keystone epitomizes how callous, arrogant, hypocritical and destructive the Big Green authoritarians have become. It’s high time the rights and needs of poor and middle class families got some recognition.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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Background

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be challenged, no sacred truths.

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded in the graph above: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

"Thinking" molecules?? Terrestrial temperatures have gone up by less than one degree over the last 150 years and CO2 has gone up long term too. But that proves nothing. It is not a proven causal relationship. One of the first things you learn in statistics is that correlation is not causation. And there is none of the smooth relationship that you would expect of a causal relationship. Both temperatures and CO2 went up in fits and starts but they were not the same fits and starts. The precise effects on temperature that CO2 levels are supposed to produce were not produced. CO2 molecules don't have a little brain in them that says "I will stop reflecting heat down for a few years and then start up again". Their action (if any) is entirely passive. Theoretically, the effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere should be instant. It allegedly works by bouncing electromagnetic radiation around and electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. But there has been no instant effect. Temperature can stay plateaued for many years (e.g. 1945 to 1975) while CO2 levels climb. So there is clearly no causal link between the two. One could argue that there are one or two things -- mainly volcanoes and the Ninos -- that upset the relationship but there are not exceptions ALL the time. Most of the time a precise 1 to 1 connection should be visible. It isn't, far from it. You should be able to read one from the other. You can't.

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

Fossil fuels are 100% organic, are made with solar energy, and when burned produce mostly CO2 and H2O, the 2 most important foods for life.

Warmists claim that the "hiatus" in global warming that began around 1998 was caused by the oceans suddenly gobbling up all the heat coming from above. Changes in the heat content of the oceans are barely measurable but the ARGO bathythermographs seem to show the oceans warming not from above but from below

(1). “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness… “The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale…Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent…” (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, “Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?”)

(2). “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)

Consensus: As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem -- Christopher Hitchens

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

Another 97%: Following the death of an older brother in a car crash in 1994, Bashar Al Assad became heir apparent; and after his father died in June 2000, he took office as President of Syria with a startling 97 per cent of the vote.

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is
maximum 4%.

How 'GREEN' is the FOOTPRINT of a WIND TURBINE? 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of concrete

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correla­tion coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here .....